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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29252430">a thief, a child, a monster</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge'>thefudge</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(a sexy kinda T), (spiritual sex...sort of), 2x13, Avatar State, Belligerent Sexual Tension, F/M, Spiritual, the drill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:48:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,696</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29252430</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. He is a thief, a child, a monster. She too wants to be a thief, a child, a monster. (a missing scene from 2x13: The Drill)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aang/Azula (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a thief, a child, a monster</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>as always, the fault belongs to tashii (@irresistible-revolution) who has been watching ATLA with me and guiding me through this journey and also inspiring me and egging me on with this electric ship. idk where this came from, but after watching "The Drill" I knew I had to insert my trash in it. This is set during their amazing fight in that episode and it could be read as a sort of "missing scene". I'm sorry if I got any of the lore wrong, I'm still in the process of watching this show lol, but I hope you enjoy this (slightly trashy) oneshot!<br/>also, go read "a thousand little faces" by tashii because it's the layered, poignant and hot post-ATLA fic of your dreams!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>***</p><p> </p><p>The drill may be a wonder of technology, but inside, it stinks like a fetid corpse, like a living thing that gave its last breath here. Inhaling the air is dangerous.</p><p>But it can’t be helped. He follows her into the furnace, jumping between steel braces and rods and pipes, diving into an unfamiliar sea of fire and metal.  </p><p>Azula’s blue fire ignites the way. He dodges and swerves and skids on the spot as the flames lick his heels. What he wants most is to keep her down here, distracted, so that she cannot do damage elsewhere. For she is a destructive force, if there ever was one. Azula seems so bent on mastering him that she cares little for her own operation. That determined single-mindedness does not really frighten him, but what <em>does</em> make Aang pause is Azula’s talent for staying airborne. He has never seen someone so deft with the air. Her feet, like his, hardly touch the ground.</p><p>The thought, weird and fleeting, rushes at him just as her figure flies in his vicinity.</p><p>
  <em>She could’ve been an air bender.</em>
</p><p>Aang blocks her attack and dodges again.</p><p>He can hear Azula’s frustrated growl over the yawning of machinery. He keeps deflecting and curbing her blows instead of truly hitting back.</p><p>But Azula is not one to fight with fire and lightning alone. She lands on a ramp below and follows his movements with her gaze.</p><p>“The mighty Avatar does not have it in him to fight, I see. How are you going to face the rest of your enemies if you can hardly touch <em>me</em>? Oh, but what am I saying? I <em>am</em> the rest of your enemies.” And she throws an elegant whip of lightning in his direction. “Don’t think that you can avoid me for long.”</p><p>“I’m not avoiding you. I just have no interest in hurting you,” he says, landing softly on a gangway above her.</p><p>“Aww, how wretchedly sweet,” she sneers. “Save that benevolent thought for someone lesser than me.”</p><p>“No.” He frowns. “I don’t care about you. I don’t even know you. But I know you’re probably only doing this because the Fire Nation and your father put you up to it.”</p><p>Azula lifts her chin. Her eyes shine with something like hatred, but not aimed at him, aimed beyond him, at ghosts that he cannot see. Her jaw trembles for a moment. And then she smiles.</p><p>“My, you wound me, Avatar. Are you saying our fight isn’t personal?”</p><p>“I’m saying you’re <em>forcing</em> it to be personal. If I wasn’t the Avatar, and if you were not a Princess of the Fire Nation, we would not be fighting. We have no reason to.”</p><p>Azula unconsciously lifts her hand to her headpiece. It’s strange to hear him call her princess.</p><p>“But we are what we are,” she retorts. “And I have plenty of reasons, Avatar.”</p><p>“Oh yeah? Name one,” he says, skirting past another bolt of lightning.</p><p>“Power,” she says, swift and dangerous, and before he can see her, she is already in the air, already joining him where she shouldn’t belong.</p><p>“See?” Aang yells. “That’s not a reason!”</p><p>“Of course it is!” she snaps. “I might also add as reason your presumption in thinking you know anything about me!”</p><p>Her features are distorted and heightened in the light of the blue fire. But she is still oddly cold and beautiful. Aang intercepts a flame with air and throws it back at her where she receives it in her palm only to cast it back at him in a wider, ever burning ring. The air crackles and bends.</p><p>“You’ll tire of this, eventually, Avatar, and then you’ll have to actually fight me. No more hiding behind your friends’ skirts. No more cowardly escapes on the back of your stupid bison.”</p><p>Aang feels the pressure of her words, the precision, like bolts of blue flame sinking into his chest.</p><p>He <em>is</em> tired. She annoys and unsettles him with her cold playfulness, her proud rage, her ability to fly, her elegance and animalic ruthlessness. Maybe she really <em>is</em> all his enemies, all their facets.</p><p>The mention of his cowardice angers him, but the mention of his friends and Appa unmoors him.</p><p>The strangest thing is that it occurs simultaneously.</p><p>Her lightning strikes his forehead and seems to ignite his tattoos. He enters the Avatar state before he even knows himself.</p><p>The light inside him spills outside him and when he crushes his fist in the palm of his hand, the metal scaffolding groans and shakes with him. Azula is thrown against one of the braces and, before she can recover, violent gusts of air shackle her and throw her down into the depths of the machinery, as Aang flies at her in cold rage.</p><p>Azula opens her mouth and fire spits out, fire between them like a solid wall.</p><p>Aang catches that fire between his fingers and lets it linger there, as if it now belonged to him.</p><p>And it does.</p><p>He extinguishes the flame for a moment – and then – and then without even pausing for design, he forges a ball of blue fire and blows on it and the globe turns into a thousand little arrows of fire, rushing at her.</p><p>Azula hastily throws up a shield, but a few arrows graze her clothes and cheeks and stain her black with char.</p><p>She screams in anger and hunger and awe.</p><p>“That is <em>my</em> fire!”</p><p>Aang’s voice booms and crashes against the tall beams. It is a primordial voice, deep and violent and full of horrible wisdom.</p><p>“All fire is my fire,” he replies coolly.</p><p>Azula stares at him and stares and <em>stares</em>.</p><p>It isn’t fair. It isn’t right.</p><p>He is a thief, a child, a monster.</p><p>She too wants to be a thief, a child, a monster.</p><p>“Give it back,” she rasps. “Give it to me. Don’t hoard it.”</p><p>And it’s not the power raking through him that alerts Aang to how far he’s slipped the confines of himself, but rather the naked look of hunger in her eyes and those venomous words. <em>Don’t hoard it.</em></p><p>As if he could, as if he <em>would</em>.</p><p> “<em>No</em>.” he thunders. “No. I don’t want it. I don’t want to be like this.”</p><p>“Why <em>not</em>?” She bares her teeth. “What I wouldn’t <em>give</em> for a taste of it. You don’t deserve this much power.”</p><p>“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p><p>“Try me!”</p><p>And she bellows as loud as the ancestors inside him.</p><p>Aang shivers at the sound of it.</p><p>Maybe she <em>does</em> deserve this power. Let her see what it means.</p><p>Let her. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Azula sees the sky, even if there is only a steel roof above her head.</p><p>She sees the sky without stars, without light. She sees the colorless ether turning into a mouth, a lake of electric darkness, and then vividly, <em>his</em> eyes – or perhaps her eyes – she’s not sure anymore – her body feels like lightning itself, devoid of flesh, and there is only air where a heart should beat –</p><p>It is glorious, painful, vessel-like bliss.</p><p>She has always been a great student, disciplined in her desires, yet always eager to hurt.</p><p>She would have made a fine monk.</p><p>When Aang slams her against the wall and places his hand over her forehead she lets her head fall back in delicious agony.</p><p>His hand passes over her temples, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, pouring this deathly energy into her, filling her and depleting her in the same drop, letting her know how feeble she is, and yet how strong she could be if he allowed it.</p><p>She moans and screams, a triumphant, agonized sound, as his fingers cup her jaw and then wrap around her throat. She opens her mouth wider, allowing him further access, and he opens his own mouth, and that ancestral spark of life whose overflow is death passes from him to her.</p><p>The Avatar groans in relief. He has found someone who can take this burden. He discharges everything inside her: he pours out the anger, the helplessness, the loneliness, the secret hunger to possess all the elements which is part of his every breath. He gives her as much as she can take before he feels her life hanging by a thread.</p><p>Azula grips his shoulder in despair, clawing at his robes, yet there is no beseeching there.</p><p>No, instead, she doesn’t want him to stop.</p><p><em>Keep going</em>, her spirit says, tempting his spirit.</p><p>Their foreheads almost touch.</p><p>Aang sees himself in her eyes. He does not like the reflection, and yet he knows he will want to step inside that reflection every time he thinks about her and this moment.</p><p>“Now, our fight is personal,” he rasps, that voice, so eerie, so divine and awful, and yet laced with something childlike, something of him that he gives her.</p><p>He steps away from her, dropping her from his grip.</p><p>Azula tumbles to the ground gently, mouth still open in the act of feeding. She rolls to the side with a moan of wanting.</p><p>Aang swallows. He feels the mortal touch of his body once more.</p><p>He shouldn’t have done that.</p><p>He shouldn’t have – but it felt <em>good</em> – and she took <em>everything – </em>she was almost ready to die for it.</p><p>A part of him is repelled at himself and her. Another part is drunk on the feeling. How easy it was and <em>is</em> to give her what she wants.</p><p>He knows she will stir soon. Already she is slowly regaining her powers.</p><p>Her headpiece has fallen next to her, the glint of golden teeth.</p><p>Aang picks it up. The prongs cut him gently.</p><p>He doesn’t know why he does it, but he slips it inside his robes before he flies away.</p><p>He won’t tell anyone about their encounter, not even Katara. He will hide her headpiece and only look at it at night, when everyone else is asleep.</p><p>He will wonder about her, about her ability to step inside him and her willingness to let him step inside her.</p><p>The next time he enters the Avatar state, he has a feeling she will be there.</p>
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